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On the surface, 16-year-old Nathan Tindell appears to be an overachiever in academics and hobbies alike.

Between making the dean’s list at Wyoming Seminary Upper School and taking honors classes, while swimming competitively and performing with two different choirs at the school, he never stops pushing himself to be his very best. But the reason he continues to work hard and excel is much different than an average teenager’s driving force.

At age 11, Nathan began suffering from severe headaches, which later turned out to be miningioma, a cancerous brain tumor in his left temporal lobe.

“(The tumor) wrapped itself around the optic nerve of my left eye,” he said. “It was originally in my left temporal lobe, about the size of a lemon, taking up about a fourth of my brain. It was very big, and put a lot of pressure on my brain.”

A week after an MRI showed this tumor, Nathan was in surgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The tumor began to grow back almost immediately and he had a second surgery in January 2014, but the tumor was too close to the optic nerve to be completely removed. In order to contain the tumor, in the summer of 2014, Nathan went in for 45 days and 30 rounds of proton radiation therapy.

And through it all, he managed to stay active with his extracurricular activities, keep up with his school work and maintain a positive attitude.

“After the tumor was removed, it certainly took me a little while to be back to the person that I was beforehand. It took me a long time to recover mentally and physically,” Nathan said. “In terms of extracurriculars, I was swimming pretty much six weeks after both of my surgeries. It was a while until I could do flip turns and dives in the water … so short term it paused my life for a while.”

“After his first surgery his face was so swollen that his eyes were swollen shut, he couldn’t see for a little bit,” Nathan’s mother, Debbie Tindell, added. “In all of these pictures, you just see him smiling with his thumbs up and smiling like, ‘I’ve got this, it’s okay,’ with this swollen face.”

The tumor has been stable for the past three years since the radiation therapy, but Nathan receives MRI scans on an annual basis to check on its status.

“From the surgeries, I’ve often had a very optimistic outlook on life,” Nathan said. “I think it really gave me a different perspective on life since it was a very major surgery. When you have to look death in the face, it helps you appreciate life a bit.”

Nathan said that although he felt like he had to work harder to learn in school and grasp concepts while he was going through treatment, it pushed him to spend that much more time on both excelling in school and in his hobbies.

“I’d say I became discouraged a lot,” he added. “I had to study a lot harder and work a lot harder to get to the same level as others. I told myself that everybody has their strengths and difficulties ... so I took my strengths and applied it to my difficulties, like you can look at life with a glass half full or half empty. I always kept that half-full attitude whenever I was discouraged about how I was feeling.”

Today, Nathan continues to score top marks at school, while swimming competitively for the Wyoming Seminary Blue Knights and the Wilkes-Barre YMCA Dolphins. He works as a certified lifeguard at the YMCA, where he also teaches swim lessons. He also performs as a tenor in Wyoming Seminary’s chorale and select Madrigal Singers.

Although only a high school junior, Nathan continues to think toward his future. He said he has considered going to college for physical therapy, either combining it with his love for water or working with children who need it.

“I guess the main reason I’m interested in doing physical therapy, which I think is the same reason I started lifeguarding, is I really, truly care about how people feel all of the time,” he explained. “When I can be, I like to be there for people and help them out. I like problems a lot. I like being able to figure out this is what’s going on, and this is how we can help it. I like being the person there for others when they don’t have someone or when they need someone.”

His desire to help others does not come as a surprise to his parents, who claim he earned a greater sense of maturity and empathy throughout his experience with the brain tumor. But after everything Nathan struggled through, he is like many other high school students who continue to look forward to daily achievements.

“I’m always very excited to improve my times in swimming and for concerts and different things in singing,” Nathan said. “And just in general, I’m excited to continue life.“

Debbie Tindell: Nathan really was one of those kids that as a baby, he would give something away even if it was the only thing he had. He just had a heart of gold, for forever. With the tumor, there was a period of time that was really hard. He kind of, the tumor took over who he was for a while, made it difficult for him to do physical activities, made it difficult in terms of being able to think. So his ability to overcome that, to stay positive through that, to come back to who he is, was really truly remarkable.

John Tindell: One moment that sticks out to me is his YMCA did a special fundraiser for him, “I Swim for Nathan.” Local television (stations) came out and did interviews, and at the end of one of the interviews they’re asking him a bunch of questions and he talked about everyone coming out for him to support him and how much that meant to him. And he ended the interview with “I’m the luckiest kid alive” sort of thing. It encapsulated how he has more of a macro view of the world than most kids do, and how he really takes the gifts he has and the challenges he has and is able to corral them and deal with them.

What successful parenting strategy can you share with other parents?

Debbie Tindell: I think for our whole family, hope was really what needed to guide everything we did. Move forward, roll through the obstacles as you come across them, let your kids know you love them always and no matter what, whatever they do is going to be good enough. They just can’t fail. In your eyes, they’ll always be perfect. I have to be careful saying that, though, because I don’t think that kids need to be perfect in that sense. I just mean, you know, it’s good enough. That they’ll definitely be good enough and keeping them knowing that they’re cared about.

John Tindell: I think it’s important for parents who have kids who are going through any type of situation like this to know to make sure they communicate to their kids that they’re going to be supported. To set your expectations accordingly as to where they are in that moment. Nathan was always a kid who wanted to do really well in school, really well in his swimming, every aspect of his life wanted to succeed. And there were times he couldn’t, he just physically couldn’t. He couldn’t do his homework that day, he couldn’t go to school that day, he couldn’t get in the pool that day and we had to let him know that was okay, and be that person that steps back and says, let’s find limitations, we’ll push through when we can but not push too hard.

What is the greatest challenge you’ve encountered in raising your child?

Debbie Tindell: Helplessness. Feeling helpless at times. You know when you’ve got a kid who is clearly hurting and in pain and there’s not much you can do to remove that, that’s probably the hardest. Nathan himself is just a joy. So I mean, raising Nathan has been easy. But being helpless to be able to help when he’s clearly in pain and suffering, that was hard. Before we discovered the brain tumor, that was really hard. We knew there was something wrong and we were trying to figure out what it was, and it took a while.

John Tindell: Going through surgeries and radiation was tough, but it was tougher not knowing. When we were in that phase of he knows something is wrong, we know something is wrong, but we don’t know what it is, was probably the toughest part.